Product Description: According to the author, rather than alleviating poverty, microfinance financialises poverty. By indebting poor people in the Global South, it drives financial expansion and opens new lands of opportunity for the crisis-ridden global capital markets...read more

Winner of the 2011 Paul Davidoff award! This is a book about poverty but it does not study the poor and the powerless; instead it studies those who manage poverty. It sheds light on how powerful institutions control "capital," or circuits of profit and investment, as well as "truth," or authoritative knowledge about poverty. Such dominant practices are challenged by alternative paradigms of development, and the book details these as well. Using the case of microfinance, the book participates in a set of fierce debates about development – from the role of markets to the secrets of successful pro-poor institutions. Based on many years of research in Washington D.C., Bangladesh, and the Middle East, Poverty Capital also grows out of the author's undergraduate teaching to thousands of students on the subject of global poverty and inequality.

Product Description: This book offers a comprehensive comparative analysis of the microcredit guarantee funds adopted in three South European countries and in three North African countries. It focuses on three keys areas: analysis of the regulatory framework, mapping of microcredit institutions and analysis of the main features of guarantee funds...read more

Product Description: By tracing an arc of thought and action from both historical and religious figures up through modern microfinance practitioners, Looft illustrates the many ways religious inspiration continues to remain at the crux of international economic development–while raising compelling questions around God and Mammon working together to help the poor...read more

Product Description: Research on MFI performance is still in its infancy. MFIs are hybrid organizations with dual objectives. Performance studies in microfinance are therefore less straightforward compared to performance studies in traditional banking research...read more

Product Description: Microfinance is regarded as a lynchpin in private sector solutions to a host of complex social challenges, from child labor, education, and women's rights, through to sustainable local economic development. The principle of self-help through capital accumulation in the US inner city looks similar to that of a Peruvian slum, and as practice has grown, so has the research...read more

Product Description: In the recent past, Islamic finance has made an impressive case on the banking scene by becoming an alternative to the popular conventional financial systems, spurring a lively academic debate on how the Islamic finance industry can expand its services to cover the poor...read more

Product Description: Hired by ForbesTraveler.com to review some of the most luxurious accommodations on Earth, and then inspired by a chance encounter in Dubai with the impoverished workers whose backbreaking jobs create such opulence, Bob Harris had an epiphany: He would turn his own good fortune into an effort to make lives like theirs better...read more

Product Description: Although microcredit programmes have long been considered efficient development tools, many forms of debt-induced distress have emerged in their wake. This has brought to light the problem of over-indebtedness, a topic which has been previously underexplored in the literature...read more

Product Description: Very little solid evidence exists that microloans make a dent in long-term poverty. Sadly, evidence does exist for negligence, corruption, and methods that border on extortion. Part exposé, part memoir, and part financial detective story, this is the account of a one-time true believer whose decade in the industry turned him into a heretic...read more

Product Description: The New Microfinance Handbook takes a market systems approach to financial inclusion, oriented by client needs. Framing the book with the client as the central element recognizes the emerging awareness that financial needs of the poor are many and are provided by multiple market players beyond the scope of any single institutional form...read more

Product Description: The current moment faced by the microfinance field reflects the opening lines from Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness...read more

Product Description: Forget credit card companies- make it personal! The Complete Idiot's Guide(r) to Person-to-Person Lending fills readers in on what they need to know, such as how person-to-person lending works, who lends and who borrows, and the advantages and disadvantages of Virgin- Money, Prosper, Zopa, and Facebook's Lending Club...read more